Despite media reports, Trump has not offered federal employees a "buyout"

Anyone who has read reports in the Associated Press, the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, or Axios would be under the impression that the Trump administration has offered 2 million federal workers a "buyout" offer — eight months of pay in return for a voluntary resignation.

People who rely on television news were also told that federal workers were offered a buyout.

This is also the preferred narrative of the White House. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that, under the policy, federal employees who "don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again… are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of 8 months."

The problem with this narrative — and the media coverage — is that it is false.

A "buyout" is when an employer agrees to pay an employee a lump sum, often equivalent to the employee's salary for a particular length of time, in exchange for their voluntary resignation. After agreeing to the buyout offer, the employee receives the money, and their obligations to the employer end.

The Trump administration is proposing something very different.

Under the terms of the agreement, which is posted to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, employees agree to resign effective September 30, 2025. Until that date, they remain employees of the federal government but are "exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements." This, of course, is only a valuable concession if an employee is still working. The agreement is called a "deferred resignation," not a "buyout."

The agreement states that, after accepting the deferred resignation offer, "my employing agency will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date." Administrative leave allows an employee to collect their salary while not working. But, as the agreement makes clear, that is not guaranteed. There will "likely" be changes to an employee’s official duties, according to the agreement. But they are still an employee of the federal government and are obligated to continue to fulfill whatever responsibilities are assigned to them.

An OPM memo, dated January 28, 2025, states that employees who accept the deferred resignation agreement "should promptly have their duties reassigned or eliminated and be placed on paid administrative leave." What constitutes a "prompt" placement onto paid administrative leave is not defined and will be up to each agency to determine. Further, the agency does not have to "promptly" place an employee on administrative leave if "the agency head determines that it is necessary for the employee to be actively engaged in transitioning job duties." An OPM fact sheet says federal employees who accept the "deferred registration" are not expected to work "except in rare cases determined by your agency."

This is where the policy completely falls apart. It assumes that, for many federal employees, their duties can simply be eliminated or assigned to some other federal employee who is not busy. But there is no basis for this assumption.

The policy appears to be written by allies of Trump, including Elon Musk, who have little to no experience in the federal government. The subject line of the email, "A fork in the road," was the same subject line Musk used when he encouraged Twitter employees to resign. After mass resignations, Musk realized that a bunch of the people who left were performing essential functions and tried to rehire them. "There's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go," Musk said.

On X, Musk falsely described the deferred resignation agreement as a "severance offer."

Musk also claimed on X that "[t]hose deciding to take the deferred resignation deal can do anything they want for the next 8 months and are not required to work at all whatsoever." But this is contradicted by the documents distributed by OPM, including the email, the memo, and the fact sheet.

Yesterday, the deferred resignation offer went out to 2 million federal employees, many of whom have decades of experience and are performing tasks that are essential to the functioning of their agencies. It was not targeted at individuals the Trump administration — or anyone else — believes are performing unnecessary or duplicative work. Federal employees who accept this deal do not get a buyout. They are simply gambling that their bosses place them on administrative leave. But there are no guarantees.

Federal employees could find that they agreed to resign in exchange for eight more months of working from home. Even that may not be a real benefit since many federal employees are members of unions that have contractual rights to work from home.

The Trump administration did not offer an actual eight-month buyout since such a proposal would be prohibited by law. As the American Prospect notes, federal law caps payments to incentivize voluntary resignation at $25,000, which is a lot less than most federal employees make in eight months. As a result, the deferred resignation program itself could be deemed illegal if it is viewed as a violation of the Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002, which established the cap.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) urged federal employees not to accept the offer, saying it was a trap. "The president has tried to terrorize you for about a week, and then gives you a little sweetheart offer if you resign in the next week," Kaine said on the floor of the Senate. "Don’t be fooled! …If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.… That promise is worth nothing."

---

Last week, we started a new publication, Musk Watch. NPR covered our launch HERE. It features accountability journalism focused on one of the most powerful humans in history. It is free to sign up, so we hope you’ll give it a try and let us know what you think.